


clean waters

by lizzieraindrops



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Healing, spontaneous tumblr fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-05-05 05:10:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5362583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzieraindrops/pseuds/lizzieraindrops
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beth has a self-care night. A oneshot originally posted for a prompt <a href="http://lizzieraindrops.tumblr.com/post/132986368479/beth-having-a-self-care-night-where-she-actually">on tumblr</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	clean waters

She draws a hot bath, and it’s so hot that a fog gently rolls over the mirrors in the bathroom, courteously hiding her from her reflection’s stare without making it feel like hiding. Sometimes it’s hard, after a long day (week, month…) of meeting so many stares with her best false smile, to meet her own eyes calling her bluff.

She scoops a few handfuls of epsom salt into the bath as it fills. Maybe it will ease some of the tension from her muscles, with their every fiber like a twisted wire. She rarely gets an opportunity like this: the entire weekend alone, and the apartment all to herself. No words demanding a correct reply. No eyes scraping along her fragile skin. Nothing but her; whatever’s left of her these days, anyway.

She steps into the bath and winces with the scalding heat, but relishes the sensation of it stinging up the muscles of her legs, and the soft grit of the undissolved epsom salt under her soles. It’s not that she’s been numb, not really; but neither is it that she hasn’t been. She kneels in the waters, letting her body acclimate to the temperature. Then, slowly, she reclines until she’s covered with as much water as possible without needing to hold her breath.

Slowly, just as she’d hoped, the heat and the sea-smelling salt leach tension from her body little by little. The twisted knots of fear and prolonged stress and despair - pinching the vertebrae of her neck, corded above her clavicles, strung between her shoulderblades - they’ve been tied for too long to come undone so easily, but they do loosen. And as they do, Beth suddenly realizes that she can breathe again; that she hasn’t been, not really. There’s room for two, three times as much air in her lungs, when she doesn’t need to crush herself into the shape of someone strong enough. Someone stronger than her.

She sits up in the bath and heaves a deep breath as the water trickles down the curve of her back. She notices that the film of water clinging to her cheeks isn’t steam, but tears. Soon, she finds that all the sobs she’s pinned flat against the insides of her ribs have reinflated and are all clamoring for escape - but it’s alright, now. She lets them. She cries so often, and yet she can’t remember the last time she _let_ herself cry, as much as she needed to. She lets her tears mix their own salt into the waves that lap at the walls of the tub from her shaky gasps. She waits until all the pent-up pressure inside her has spent itself in air and water.

When the wind and waves recede, she finds that her skin is her own again, that her muscles move like those of a natural creature, instead of a dogged marionette hauling itself forward by its own strings. She simply sits there in the water, in the blessed quiet, letting the heat and salt do what they can to melt away the scars hidden inside her. She nearly cries again, but for joy this time; because she feels alive again.


End file.
